Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token craters 99% on day one; team blames "sniper bots"

The LAPTOP memecoin tied to Hunter Biden launched Wednesday, briefly touched a notional market capitalization of roughly $110 billion, then collapsed more than 99% within its first hour of trading, according to DexScreener data cited by The Block.

The token opened its initial liquidity pool at $0.05, surged past $300 after an airdrop, gave back nearly all of it, and was trading around $0.84 by 12:10 a.m. ET Thursday, The Block reported.

In a Medium post published Wednesday, the LAPTOP team attributed the swing to "predatory sniper bots" and insufficient starting liquidity: "The market maker's initial liquidity was insufficient to meet this demand, and resulted in a sharp price spike up and down before liquidity could catch up." The team said it would deploy 4 million tokens — 0.4% of total supply — starting at midnight UTC on Sept. 10 to incentivize liquidity on Aerodrome pools.

Blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps called the launch a "bloodbath," estimating that about 80% of LAPTOP traders lost money — including two who lost between $100,000 and $1 million, roughly 100 who lost $10,000 to $100,000, and about 700 who lost $1,000 to $10,000.

The project also said two events tied to its prediction-based token allocation resolved "Yes," triggering a burn of 10 million tokens that it expects to cut circulating supply by about 1% in the first week. Biden had previously described, in an X post, a structure tying 30% of supply to 30 predictions on real-world events: tokens burn on a "Yes" resolution, otherwise going to charity. The first, worth 5 million tokens, resolved when digital artist Beeple referenced LAPTOP; the team did not name the second.

Separately, Biden said on X that the platform suspended the LAPTOP foundation's official account and that the team is working to restore it. "I'm not going anywhere," he wrote. The team said the airdrop had no presale and no allocations to influencers — "clearly if you've spent any time on crypto twitter this week, you know we didn't pay KOLs" — with 80 million tokens claimable by Substack subscribers who joined before Sept. 6.

Key facts

• Launch price: $0.05 initial pool; peak above $300; ~$0.84 by Thursday morning (DexScreener, via The Block).
• Peak notional market cap ~$110 billion, followed by a >99% drop in the first hour (DexScreener, via The Block).
• ~80% of traders lost money, two by $100k–$1M (Bubblemaps).
• 10 million tokens burned via two "Yes" prediction resolutions; ~1% supply cut expected (LAPTOP Medium post).

The real-world read

Every explanation for the crash comes from the party that ran the launch. The "sniper bots and thin liquidity" framing is the team's own, published on Medium — not an independent finding — and it conveniently locates blame outside the project's design. The only independent read here, from Bubblemaps, is that most participants lost money. A $110 billion "market cap" set by a few trades against a shallow pool is an arithmetic artifact, not value. The burn mechanics sound consequential but net a ~1% supply reduction, and the first "prediction" resolved simply because an artist mentioned the coin. The team's "no presale, no KOLs" assurances remain unverified assertions.

Opinion, and whose

The LAPTOP team frames the launch as demand overwhelming liquidity, and says the token is "not going anywhere" (Hunter Biden, via X). Bubblemaps characterized the debut as a "bloodbath." No independent party has endorsed the team's account of what drove the volatility.

Sources

• The Block (secondary reporting) — launch timeline, prices, market cap, burn and liquidity plans; cited DexScreener for price data, Bubblemaps for trader losses, and the LAPTOP team's Medium post and Biden's X posts.
• LAPTOP team Medium post — interested-party statement; the crash explanation and burn/liquidity claims originate here and should be treated as the project's own account.
• Hunter Biden, X posts — interested-party statements on account suspension and tokenomics.
• Bubblemaps — the one independent analysis cited, on the share and size of trader losses.

This is news coverage, not financial advice; it is not a recommendation to buy or sell anything.